The Castlegar Rebels clobbered the competition in their first home game of the season on Friday.
The Columbia Valley Rockies were the first to score at 17:39 in the first period, but the Rebels’ Jordan Wood answered seconds later, assisted by Mathew Cooper, and Ed Lindsey gave the Rebels the lead with the only other goal scored in the period, assisted by John Moeller and Wood.
Vince Bitonti scored a short-handed goal in the first half of the second period after Dallas Goodwin took a two-minute penalty for holding, but then the Rockies briefly found their way back into the game by scoring on the power play after the Rebels’ Andrew Petten took a penalty, also for holding.
The Rockies soon tied things up with another goal, courtesy of forward Robert Butterwick and assisted by Seth Summers and Brandt Black, but that seemed to be the wake-up call the Rebels needed and they went on to score another six goals in the game, winning 9-3.
“The boys, they know how to score goals, but we’re still learning how to play on the other side of the puck,” said Bill Rotheisler, Rebels coach and general manager. “They play hard, they work hard and they certainly know how to score, that’s for sure.”
Three of those last six goals were scored by Shawn Campbell, giving him a hat trick and earning him the home star for the game.
Campbell was happy with the team’s performance on Friday night.
“We came out hard and we battled strong. It was a good game overall,” he said.
While the Rebels only allowed one power-play goal against, they also successfully scored two power-play goals — though the team also counted a total of four 10-minute misconducts during the game.
Asked about this, Rotheisler said, “We’re still learning. We’ve always had — last year too — we had guys that could play well and we’ve had a fun team to watch two years in a row now, but we lost to Nelson [during last season’s playoffs] because we’re missing that certain sort of jam, which we’ve said before. So that was a big thing in our offseason, not only with the players that we have acquired and are still acquiring but even with our returning guys.”
At this point, Rotheisler said the team still needs to work on its defence.
“We were up 3-1 and things were doing pretty good … and then because things were going good, we’re on the PK and all of a sudden we forgot that the purpose of the penalty kill is to kill penalties, and we try to make too many fancy plays and you get excited for offence,” said Rotheisler.
“And all of a sudden there we are, we’re trying to create offence on a penalty kill because it worked once,” he added, referring to Bitonti’s short-handed goal in the second.
The Rebels are 2-0 against the Rockies, after also beating them 8-2 in Invermere on Saturday, Sept. 9.
They also faced the Golden Rockets on Friday, Sept. 8 — a game the Rockets won by default due to a carding error by the Rebels, according to Rotheisler.
“The boys were the better team that day and I just wasn’t the better GM that day,” he said.
The Rebels’ next game is against the Grand Forks Border Bruins on Friday, 7 p.m. at the Castlegar Complex.
Rotheisler hasn’t seen the Bruins play yet this season, but he expects a solid team.
“Emery [Olauson, coach for the Bruins,] usually has a pretty structured team and a team that really is a defense-first club, and it’s going to be a good test for us because they usually play physical and play hard,” he said.
